Essays on fiction
by Visonneau
Summary: Mostly essays, Mostly on Harry Potter. Mostly Quality Content
1. Intro

I love essays on stuff i like, not critiques, not analyses, not-pointing-out-logical-flaws-in-an-universe-that-are-necessary-to-a-good-story: Essays.

Even though many people have headcanons or reasons why they like such and such franchise, and there are now more fanfictions than published writings in all the history of mankind, the fact is that some things fare better in the vast ocean of culture, and some things now and then change this particular ocean.

This is what i'll be talking about: This is what interests me, intrigues me, keeps me up at night, and makes me think there is hope for humanity.

Everything done here is based solely on my opinion/perception of things, as Jehan le brave once said, "Twytts miens n'ensgagent qve le Roy"

This said, let me begin.


	2. Why HP works

Why Does Harry Potter work?

Countless people have made analyses before me. Some have written books. I don't read books, they're for nerds, what i read is harry potter.

Seriously though, there is something strange about harry potter: very specific story, several plot holes, fantasy world with very little worldbuilding and many blanks, a somewhat weak cast of villains (by narrative standards) and a strong cast of morally grey people doing very wrong things.

Hardly best-seller material. Hardly the kind that develops into more than 1.5 million fanfictions. And yet, here we are.

So, why so much love? Why so much fanfiction? Why do so many people continue to like it even though it's been 10 years since the end?

Here are some haphazard reasons why, that i might be in the mood to organize correctly another day.

1: The not-an-universe universe.

As i've said, HP has its lot of plot holes, its lot of blanks in worldbuilding (We do not know how magic works, the history of magical britain, what anyone else is doing on a part of a planet that doesn't have a funny accent, what happens outside hogwarts, and we do not even know how many students there are in a year at hogwarts (I've heard 40, but that would mean there are about 12000 wizards and witches all across Britain. Which is fine and all but would make no sense in-universe (except greenland and some islands in the pacific, there has been no form of national governance made without at least 20000 people involved) (Attention anarchists, all you have to do is to kill everyone except 19999 people, then all will be fine).

This kind of worldbuilding, against say, tolkien (been forced by R to include him first, send help, he is dangerous) The Eragon Series (Not you too S!) Or Terry Pratchett, who developed worlds beyond their or anyone else's control, does not stand the comparison. Any serious worldbuilding, in the sense of an history, of established settings and whatever else makes good worlds, is scarce is the series.

And that is where it succeeds.

See, to "understand" Tolkien, Eragonmanidon'tknowhisnamestoppullingmyhairS or Pratchett, you need encyclopedic memory of the books, as well as what the writer said in interviews, as well as their maps, as well as their historic/political inspirations. To understand the Potterverse, you need only read philosopher's stone.

You may say this is an oversimplification. I say it's the truth. Philosopher's stone establishes everything needed to know about the potterverse: Wizards are hidden, have a ministry, which is not doing really well at governing, there are banks and schools for wizards, everything is in middle ages aesthetic, they have owls, they have a press, they have commerce, they had war and people fought, they have magic objects, morality is somewhat grey, money matters, being muggleborn is not looked well upon, etc...

What subsequent books added is just the deduction of the world established here: There is a wizard black market, a wizard prison, French wizards (dieu merci), magical specieism, complicated spells, things are complicated and morality is grayer. That's it.

One of the reasons for that is, of course, the POV writing: we follow harry, Harry writes about what he sees and understands, and so the world we see is what is necessary to Harry's story, nothing more, sometimes less (We don't get to see any of harry's classes, except when something important happens, and we don't know the average level of spellcasting in wizarding britain, leading to many overpowered/super/god-mode Harrys, when in fact he might range from above average to Frankly talented)

And so, it is easy to recreate, your average 13 year old knows what there is to know about the potterverse, and can write the same way J.K Rowling does: By creating things when needed for the story, and re-using the others. The fact that this world is not complicated, but can be, makes it a wonderful sandbox, and thus attracts the imagination of your average reader, and inspires him to fill in the blanks. (How many theories of magic, azkaban/hogwarts/ministry/st mungos Origin stories, how many creatures, how much theories on the goblins, the banking system, most credible, some wonderful, and all better than what we actually know of )

2: Characterization and Balance.

Hp is known to have a fuckton of characters. More than the japanese language, as the kids say. But why?

To understand, let's look at harry's journey. He starts as a very, very lonely child, then, he has 2 friends, then he opens up to the weasley family and his quidditch team, then to other adults who care for him, then to more people his age, then to adults that share his goals. They are his motivation, and for them he was ready to die. They are what matters to him, and what he values: the living.

Conversely he has no clear goal in life but to survive and learn. What will be his mission, stopping Voldemort, only becomes clear to him at the end of his 5th year, and the how only becomes clear at the end of his 6th year. This differentiates him from most heroes who have a clear goal. (Destroy the Ring, Bring Balance to the World, become king of the pirates)

What these two traits means is that harry's life, the motivations behind most of his actions come from the people he meets, foes and friends alike. Harry potter reacts to the world around him.

And so there needs to be a world.

But, as we said, his world is the people that he meets. Whereas Epic quests always have an allegorical meaning, and reflect it in the author's enunciation of big, objective truths, J.K Rowling writes the life of Harry potter, and thus, she needs not explain every single of her theses, she has to create a story that is not a story, but a repertoire of how particular people looked like to harry.

This is what i would call a choice of balance: Books like LotR have an epic quest and epic writing because this is the best way to tell the thing the story is about, the fight within man to live well, be good and do right. Books like HP are written with a greater emphasis on feeling and instinct rather than intellect because that is how rowling wants to transmit the message: Be kind, you are not better, fight for what's right, do not shut up, be whatever you want to be. Rowling does this by having a roster of characters whose storyline echoes the themes of harry's journey.

And that makes particularly interesting characterization: We have people in decisive moments of their lives. We have their decisive actions and their words. The backstory that harry remembers, and thus feels important. All this in very short passages, take for example Hannah Abbot or Susan bones, who had very few moments in HP, but we know their story. We know what has happened to them and how they interacted with harry and other events. They are not throwaway characters that serve for harry to talk to and expose ideas. They have their own presence in the castle without Harry's intervention.

But they are not complete.

And that is another thing about HP characterization: it's broad strokes, defining lines, but somewhat subjective, incomplete, and thus, each person can characterize differently than their neighbors, while reading the same text. Diverse interpretations of many people with disparate qualities and motivations seems like the best way for the reader to truly appropriate the text for themselves.

Indeed, in a world where english teachers make people analyze texts for hidden meanings, and where reading without intellectual analysis is frowned upon as "entertainment" which has become somewhat of a slur for upper-class twits, giving young readers the possibility to make something of the text theirs is a gift to the reader, as well as a simply fun experience.

That brings me to my 3rd and final point.

3: Son i ain't better than you, i just think different. (line shamelessly stolen from substantial)

In terms of quality, Rowling is not better than other writers, her writing is distinctive, but not outrageously so. She does not describe buildings, environments or physical attributes so well, and we still don't know if Hermione was originally written as black or no.

But yet, none of us agree on who can write like Rowling, or what thing people who like HP can collectively agree on liking.

Why is that? Because of everything else.

Concretely: Rowling's style is refreshing because, for most people, it is radically different of the things they've read up to this point, and that is because rowling combines many elements into something new, It's a fantasy world that owes nothing to other magic worlds. It's got grey morality and flawed characters and yet it has a clear separation between good and evil. It's got characters that subvert tropes and tropey characters written just as well. It has blue and orange morality and people who hate each other that can actually put their differences aside. It recognizes that different characters have different kinds of strengths and that they are all equal in the grand scheme of things. It has a medieval aesthetic and yet has 2nd empire buildings and motorcycles.

But Rowling's success relies not in being unprecedented, others have tried to build extensively characters (Laurence Durell) to reconcile magic & modernity (Neil gaiman) and to portray complex issues with complex people (most of the french school of realism, zola, balzac, but also romantics like hugo) while maintaining a clear good and bad (M sundberg)

Instead, rowling's great gift is the one of providing a layered story, but also a layered audience. There is no standard HP fan, because there is, as i've said, nothing common about hp. The fact that she could play with A FUCKTON of tropes while juggling with complex characterization while portraying good and evil and love as the answer and the fight of a new generation against the principles of old, and still deliver a coherent story that could appeal to broad segments of the public is unparalleled.

Thus, we can say that the success of rowling lies in her introspection: what can i do to make this minor character remembered? How do i make people sad about offscreen deaths? How can i make a character that absolutely no one can like or vouch for?

It is her perpetual ability to surprise, to enchant, to divert from what we know (and never break the suspension of disbelief) while still appealing to something deep about human nature that makes the world captivating. It is a genius of elements. Of how cogs work together. It is not a genius that can pass the three sentences test (A test designed by S, take any book series, assign three sentences with 1 verb to each of them and try to see if it's coherent, some books are reflected better (LotR, Narnia, Foundation) because they have themes predominant to the story, while other (the cornetto trilogy, HP, the chtulhu mythos) are more story driven)

So, in my opinion, this is why HP works


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